Doshiba DIS-1052B Snow Cone Machine

During the same thrift store outing I found the VCR detailed last post, I found this mystery machine. Every word printed on it was in Japanese, and it seemed to be missing a large component on the bottom. But at a dollar fifty, I thought the mystery was quite worth it. I purposely refrained from looking up the model number 'till after, and decided to see if I could figure out what it was by taking it apart. My guess was a food processor of some kind - though it spun far too slowly to be effective as that. Turns out its a snow cone ice shaver. One satisfied Amazon customer raved, "When I tried, I could of fluffy shaved ice with ice roses refrigerator without problems."


I too could have had this mythical problem-free fluffy shaved ice on demand in the convenience of my own home, had I not destroyed the machine before I knew its worth. Damn shame.

 

There were two main pieces, which slid into one another. The white piece slid into the larger blue piece and housed the blade and held the ice while the metal disk in the blue part pressed and rotated the ice against the blade.

 

The two pieces together. You can see the blade mounted on by two screws.

View inside at the blade.

Detail of the ice spinner. It has a few cleats sticking out which would grab the ice forcing it to move against the blade, though they don't appear to be very robust - I imagine the ice slips a lot against those cleats. Really, this machine probably didn't work all that well...

It operated by simply pressing down on the giant button on top. One speed, nice and simple.

Brief pause to look at all the wonderful Japanese (though I like that it does clearly say "made in china".)

Another classic warning illustration

Pretty simple to take apart as well. Only the blue section had any mechanical components, and the shell was held together with just two screws. 

Nothing special going on in the top section. The button had a spring popping it up, and had a little arm which pressed a trigger in the main body when pressed down.

Here's the main body. Essentially just a motor connected to the trigger mentioned (bright silver rectangle).

Detail of the trigger

This was the surprise of the whole machine though. As far as I could tell this component held and helped track the gold head you see there on the motor's spinning shaft.

This component had three pieces. The center disk had a free floating bead-type thing which spun in the track enclosed by the end pieces. You'll notice the track made by those pieces, however, is sloped - it would cause the bead to rise and fall as it spun in the track (detail shot of the track below). This, I believe, would translate to the motor's shaft, ultimately causing the metal disk with the cleats mentioned above to bounce or rattle the ice as it spun. This would in theory make the ice shave better... I guess? Really ingenious though, I'll give the designers big credit on that one.

In these shots it easier to see how the track made by these pieces is sloped, causing, I believe, the motor to bounce

Moving on, I took the motor and its chassis out of the blue shell, revealing a system of interlocking gears and cogs. I think either these gears down shifted the motor's shaft to a much slower speed (roughly 15 RPM) or increased its power to really grind the ice. 

The motor on its own. They named it "Huayi". Cute.

Detail of the two electromagnets in the motor which spin the shaft

I attempted to take the motor apart, but after these sweet long screws were removed, try as I might, I wasn't able to disassemble the motor further. They used some very strong adhesives.

The only thing left on the chassis that held the motor was the trigger/switch. It, too, was mounted in a spring loaded fashion so that it would move with bumping and jostling of the ice.

The last thing I want to bring your attention to was the way the trigger/switch was mounted to its plastic arm - again, in a clever fashion. At the time the plastic arm was being injection molded, the trigger was already inside that mold, the molten plastic was forced through two holes in the trigger component, and allowed to bead on the other side (detail of beads in the top half). Thus, when the arm cooled, the trigger was sort of locked on, no adhesives or screws needed. Neat!

 Please God, let someone understand my crazy explanations for how these processes worked. Sorry if they're still unclear, but again, I encourage all of you to ignore my comments and study each photo to make your own inferences. These projects are a way for me to learn all the clever ways engineers and industrial designers make the things we use everyday. Each piece and component has its own story and fingerprints of a brilliant mind... and all in the humble confines of things like a stupid blue snow cone maker.